


disconnect me from my skin

by foibles_fables



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Femslash, I just want them to be girlfriends so bad ok, Internalized Homophobia, Repression, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25214920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foibles_fables/pseuds/foibles_fables
Summary: There was no way for Sister Beatrice to know how these touches would form a pattern.(Or, the several times Beatrice and Ava touched before that first successful attempt at a twenty-foot phase. Through 1x08.)
Relationships: Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva
Comments: 91
Kudos: 727





	disconnect me from my skin

**Author's Note:**

> SO, I've fallen in love with these two and just needed to write something for them. This was a two-hour slapdash work because I was desperate to write just somethin'. Hoping to get more practice and give them so much more <3

The first time she touches Ava, it’s to stick a dose of tranquilizer right in her neck.

Looking back, it feels appropriate.

Just a quick grasp of her upper arm as the needle does its quick work, holding her body upright long enough for her to collapse into Father Vincent.

“I had a feeling she’d be a handful.” Prepared as usual. Prepared as always, for every contingency. She is flawed, but she is useful. She’s learned to be useful. She hasn’t unlearned the flaws, as much as she wishes she has.

Sister Beatrice helps Father Vincent with Ava’s dead weight, holding her ankles. Just an unconscious, oblivious Halo Bearer. An unknown girl, and nothing more.

After such a methodical form of initial contact, there was no way for Sister Beatrice to know how these touches would form a pattern.

(Catholic boarding school and all of that bloody test prep be damned.)

* * *

The second touch is less of a _touch_ , and more of a concussion.

“I understand that you’re scared, but you need to calm down.” There’s so much this girl does not know.

Words don’t matter. The Halo’s unbridled power reacts with gorgeous violence to Ava’s panic, sending Beatrice, Lilith, and Ava alike flying into the masonry. Beatrice barely hears Lilith’s aggravated comment before they all lose touch with gravity, sent in three opposite directions by the Halo’s confused fury.

From a distance, the blast would have been beautiful.

Right before her head smacks into the stone, Beatrice only sees Ava levitating. She moves to cross herself, but the impact comes too soon.

(She had told the truth. She never saw Shannon do that. And seeing it now is captivating in a way that seizes her stomach. But that’s just the reaction to seeing the power of faith manifested right in front of her. That’s what it is.)

* * *

The third touch is the one that toes the line.

The girl has been reduced to trembling, silent tears in Mother Superion’s office. Beatrice watches them squeeze from her eyes, rolling down flushed cheeks until they cling to the underside of her chin. She’s hardly breathing. Just shaking. It’s a far cry from the girl who sidled up to her during the last meal, with that awkward grin and all of the flippant remarks. (“It’s my default.”) The girl who vomited up all of her doubts, all at once, until her words bordered on the brink of disjointed.

“We all have a past, Ava.” Beatrice’s reply had been concise in the face of Ava’s meandering phrases. Parsimony, in any of several languages, is another of her strong suits. “Secrets that are ours alone.”

And there are plenty of them to go around. But then had certainly not been the time to think of them, let alone list them.

But now, Ava is dismantled, standing there with stiff hands and a heaving chest, looking so much smaller than she had beside her at the table. And it’s one of Beatrice’s charges to bring comfort to those in sadness. Doubly so, to keep this Halo Bearer here with them. Another stiff hand on the covered part of her shoulder should do the trick.

It’s another story entirely when Ava turns with her whole weight and leans into Beatrice, unsteady hand snaking up Beatrice’s back to grasp her shoulder, finally drawing in a ragged gasp and letting the tears flow into the spot of Beatrice’s habit where her bare shoulder would meet her bare neck.

It freezes Beatrice. She suddenly does not know where her own hands should go. Nowhere feels right. Plenty of places feel right. One part of her lurches its vehement protest - the other just craves. Beatrice’s hands hover behind her head and her shoulder blades for lack of knowing and the lack of decision.

Ava does not seem to mind.

Beatrice finally settles on touching the back of her neck. The clothed part of it.

It should feel appropriate. The same way touch through combat is appropriate, even righteous. Hands that bruise, hands that bring peace. They can be one in the same - they are one in the same.

But her pulse says something different.

(“None of that matters once you realize that not everything is about you.” Not everything is about Beatrice. Not everything is about Ava. Beatrice tells herself this twice before Ava releases her, murmuring an apology, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.)

* * *

The next touch is, again, one of cold terror and adrenaline. (This is already growing tiresome.)

“Something’s wrong, I can’t move.”

Ava had lost her composure in the face of Beatrice’s demise.

No, not because of Beatrice. Because of more. Not everything is about Beatrice.

“Can you feel my hand?” Keep speaking through the wobbling.

“Yeah.” She’s gasping and stammering but her eyes lock with Beatrice’s, seeking reassurance, seeking a connection. The blood on her face is striking as she gasps. Almost beautiful. Almost.

This is a girl who wants to live. (“I didn’t kill myself. I’m serious.”)

Beatrice realizes how their hands are clasped together only after she asks if Ava can feel it.

(“There’s more to it than you’re telling.”) Beatrice had spoken truly. There’s always more. There’s more. Her thumb is in Ava’s palm and there’s more _more_ to push away.

But it’s true, there’s more. And not everything is about Beatrice. So she draws Ava’s arms around her shoulders despite it all and hoists her up, thankful for the relief from the churning inside when Mary takes half the burden.

* * *

Ava takes a bolt to the chest not thirty-five seconds later.

The threshold of _tiresome_ has been reached.

Beatrice touches her to yank it out without hesitation. (“Beatrice is a badass!” It rings in her ears with the _thump-thump_ of blood-rush.)

She touches Ava in the back of that van to keep her blood inside, a secure barrier of cloth and her other sisters’ hands between them. The way Ava smiles up at her - tiny, muted, but peaceful and finally quiet and reassured - washes over her and washes over all the clamoring in her head. Their plans, their getaway, the uncertainty of what’s to follow.

And, of course, the ever-present clamor. But there’s a chance that the curve of her lip just serves to make that one louder.

“How’s she doing?”

“Well, she’s smiling. I’ll take that as a good sign.”

Beatrice has to look away, busying herself with tending to the arrow wound.

(“I’m just trying to figure out whether you’re more or less nun-like than the others.” It’s quite the puzzle.)

* * *

“You’re four feet through. Keep going straight.”

The little red dot on the screen, predictably, stops moving.

“You’ve stopped moving.” Her own words suddenly feel dumb. They didn’t used to do that before.

 _“I’m lost_.” It’s a common feeling.

“Take two steps in any direction,” and more suggestions. Keep Ava moving. Just keep her moving through this mass of brick.

 _“I want out. Bring me out!_ ” But Beatrice can’t, and even if she could have, should she?

“Just a few more feet. You can do this.”

Ava’s breathing only grows more desperate in the earpiece until she bursts from the opposite side of the constructed wall, body sprawled without control, shuddering and struggling for air.

Beatrice acts on instinct.

“It’s okay.” Tablet cast aside, hands all over her shoulders, leaning over her curling form. Her voice is hushed. Her voice is shaking. Her heart is pounding. Because she succeeded.

More touch. Her hands are suddenly on Ava’s face and Beatrice wants to touch more and more until Camila and Jillian Salvius burst into the room.

(“The other-worldly energy was too powerful for ordinary people to withstand.” They were onto something, there. Where was Beatrice’s mammoth stone, her own _let it rest_?)

* * *

Words can touch in those stinging ways, too.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Beatrice knows her face is betraying her but shakes her head nonetheless. But the girl is relentless, too excitable.

“Your ignorance is really a downer sometimes.” Beatrice can’t stand how her voice cracks. So much talk of personal pain. But she needs to harden her expression. Not everything is about her. This is about Ava. _A lot_ is about Ava. Too much is about Ava. Something deep inside of her twinges.

“Okay, but why are you so mad at me?”

She’s relentless _and_ clueless and Beatrice wants to scream.

Instead, she swallows it and speaks calmly. Apologizes. She’s used to forcing it away. Once more is nothing.

“It’s not you. It was everyone but you.”

Her heart’s crazy under her habit. Those dark eyes, so intent. Beatrice wants them averted but also on her, just like they are, for as long as either of them can stand it.

More words pour out. She remembers Ava at dinner, that first time they spoke. It feels like ages ago, but was just a handful of days. The fact hits her spine with a vengeance. She just keeps speaking. More normal, acceptable, skilled, value, flaws. Hating what she is. She’s bleeding out right in front of Ava and Ava is just watching. Not cloth to press onto the wound. There’s not one large enough to hold all that’s coming from her mouth, from her tears.

“What should make you happy only brings you pain.” She needs to try to end eloquently. “Pain is what made me a Sister Warrior.” It’s her only saving grace in this tangled mess. Her skills. Her center. Her wordcraft. Her value.

It doesn’t help, here. She feels the mass of her words, of her heart, of all she could say, closing in all around her, just like Ava felt the stone crushing her. Everything in her soul suffocating her. She could swallow it down.

But now, Ava is just staring.

Too much time passes. Beatrice keeps her face stoic, turned down. It’s too much.

“Don’t hate what you are.” Ava’s voice is calmer and surer than Beatrice has heard it yet. “What you are is beautiful.”

The way their eyes meet is also beautiful.

But it’s only a second before Beatrice puts it behind that mammoth stone.

* * *

The last touch feels the most natural, and also the most daunting. Paradox of paradoxes. But faith is Beatrice’s business.

“The wall is your fear. It’s your deepest pain.”

The pain finally comes out of her, leaping into existence, from Ava’s lungs to her throat to the device in Beatrice’s ear.

“What scares me is being alone.”

And Beatrice understands.

(“Loner” was a judgmental term on a formal review. But also not wholly incorrect.)

“But that will never happen.” It wouldn’t. Ava is here now. Ava has them. Ava has her, even though Ava having her has felt more and more like something scalding her skin. “We will never leave you.”

No matter how much it hurt - no matter how much Beatrice had to keep at bay.

That is what the Order of the Cruciform Sword is.

“You mean that?”

“You know I do.”

( _I_ , Beatrice says. Not the plural. Not the collective. She catches it too late and hopes Ava doesn’t catch it at all.)

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen feet. Beatrice waits for her. Tries not to hold her breath. Her lungs are burning. Have been burning. She needs the air.

Nineteen.

Before she can look back up from the tablet, Ava phases through the stone and directly into Beatrice’s arms.

(Her arms. How are they ready and waiting? She’s quick to react but it’s unfathomable.)

It takes her air right away.

Ava holds on. Beatrice holds on. They both hold on, sinking to their knees. Tight grip, both sides, unabashed bodies held together with the breathless laughter of success.

“You made it.”

It feels appropriate to cradle Ava’s face in her hands before it becomes something more. Their connected gazes and the lingering smiles made her go weak. Ava’s smile, trying to flow in and occupy her space. And Beatrice wanted it. In every space. Just for that moment, without guard. She lets an unpracticed hand stroke Ava’s grinning cheek, over her ear, down to her neck. It shakes the whole way. Ava’s skin is soft under her palm. A bit sweaty. She’s panting. Beatrice is panting, too. Occupied, overcome. Those dark eyes. Drained. Unbound, unburdened. Herself. Just for a second.

“Only thanks to you.”

There is so much more there. Ava’s face is so close. Beatrice had just been touching it.

But through the frenzy, Beatrice remembers two things.

First, she is not unbound. Nothing has changed in the last several hours. Nothing will change. Nothing can change.

Second, not everything is about her.

She clears her throat and tears her hand and eyes away, in that order. The severing of the physical connection doesn't stop the cruel desire. Beatrice mouths her way through it.

“The Halo is nearly depleted. Um...we need to keep testing. Figure out how long it takes to recharge so we can get you out of that tomb.” A pause. Beatrice collects herself. “Think you’re up for a few more tries?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll be there every step of the way.”

Ava smiles that tiny smile at her again, and Beatrice hopes they can both survive those few more tries.

The mass of it all looms over her. Twenty feet of stone.

Somewhere in the base of her skull, she wishes it was Ava’s hands instead.

Again, Beatrice shoves it away. They've already shared too many touches. It makes her shiver.

And this is not about her. She should know that well by now. She _does_ know that well by now.

(This is everything about her.)


End file.
